· · · · · · · The Word of Praise. (_Homilies on Second Epistle to Corinthians_, i., vol. iii., p. 8.) · · · · · · · Let us not lose heart in temptation. For no man that feasts, and slumbers, and flags, is united to Christ, nor any of those who lead this soft and dissolute life; but the man in tribulation and temptation, he who walks on the narrow path, is near to Christ. For this was His path, and so He said: _The Son of man hath not whereon to lay His Head_. Therefore do not grieve that you are tried, seeing Whom you are like in this, how you are purified by temptations, and what great things you gain. Nothing is grievous except falling out with God. Short of this neither tribulation, nor snares, nor anything else, has power to afflict the wisely-tempered soul; but just as a small spark falling into a deep abyss goes out at once, so the force of despondency sinking into a good conscience is destroyed and quickly disappears. Thus it was that Paul always rejoiced, since he drew his courage from the things of God, and did not even perceive human evils: he was grieved as a man, but did not fall. Thus, too, that patriarch of old was in gladness whilst suffering many painful things. For consider: he was exiled from his country, he went through long and grievous journeys, and coming to a foreign land, he had not a place for the sole of his foot. After that he was a prey to hunger, and it made him a wanderer, and his hunger was followed by the taking of his wife, by the fear of death, by childlessness, and war, and dangers, and plottings, and at last by the crowning and most bitter grief of all, the slaughtering of his only son, the heir.